It’s mostly the raw sounds that drive my arranger choice decisions (or any keyboard, tbh). Sadly, while modern workstations have made great leaps forward in synth sound realism, they have tended to move further and further away from acoustic instrument emulation. In truth, most TOTL arrangers have better acoustic sounds like saxes, guitars, strings etc., especially articulated sounds.

This is to be expected, as workstations if designed with live use at all tend to be designed for group players, where killer guitars etc. aren’t needed because you have a real one (plus emulating acoustic instruments isn’t really a thing for most youngsters). All in all, for the older solo performer, the modern arranger is still probably the better choice, as IMHO you lose more going to something like a MODX than you gain. If you are doing ‘dated’ music, maybe the ‘dated’ keyboard is the better choice!

Displays are also not a priority for me live. To be quite frank, if you are spending much time live looking at a screen of any type, you aren’t looking at your audience, or your hands, or the girl at the bar! I try to set my keyboard up so I can perform the song without any looking at all… different Performances handle all the button pushing and screen squinting chores live..! Yes, it would be nice at home while preparing stuff, but that’s what my iPad apps are for if I want to give my aging eyes a rest!

Arrangers are pushing 40 years of refinement about layout. It’s a tough job to come up with a better scheme, most of the bad ones have been tried and failed!